A Merger of Squeals.(Column)(Column)

I was wrong. Twice. Got egg on my face, I do, but I'm not the only one.

Five years ago, or near enough, I got all excited about the prospects for Chrysler's future as a "partner'' with Mercedes-Benz. It is my job to be skeptical, but I bought that whole "merger of equals'' thing about management's intentions for DaimlerChrysler. First inkling I might be wrong came when the management team that had, after all, made Chrysler a desirable partner for Daimler-Benz, either left or was canned before the Stuttgart folks could have learned much, if anything, from them.

Then, about a year ago, I noted it was to Detroit's credit that its managers had not been implicated in the profiteering and other corporate excesses of the '90s.

Ugly stuff is coming to light thanks to Kirk Kerkorian's lawsuit against DCX, claiming chairman Jrgen Schrempp had defrauded shareholders-of which Kerkorian was the biggest individual one-by presenting a de facto buyout as a merger of equals. I'm not sure I'm buying into Kerkorian's premise-that shareholders deserve more money to sell the company outright than they would get from a merger (where is that written?)-but the parade of executives who have marched across the stage in the course of the trial has done nothing to enhance the reputation of business leaders for integrity.

Bob Lutz got out of Dodge, and Plymouth and Chrysler, just in time to avoid being dragged through this mud. Or maybe because he saw it coming? It'd be interesting to hear his take. Lucky for him he hasn't had to appear amongst the lot of finger-pointing prevaricators we've been treated to in this merger of sequels. Bob Eaton emerged in court from a quiet retirement to more or less say he didn't really know all the terms of the deal he supposedly engineered as one of the "equals,'' except maybe for knowing he would come out of it $70 million richer, and all the rest was Schrempp's fault. Even smart- er-looking Chrysler execs, like Tom Stall-kamp and James Holden, had to admit to being outmanuevered by the Germans, who come across as a ...